We are excited to announce that we are planning a new adventure, beginning in January 2012! This journey is called Trekking the Planet. It is a 400-day, around-the-world trip to raise geography education awareness.
Even more than five years after we took our 4 1/2 month around the world trip with our girls in 2003 to 2004, we still get questions about what the circumstances were leading up to that journey and why we decided to do it. We received our initial inspiration from several sources.
There is no electrical grid in Buhoma – the name of the settlement that includes the buildings both inside and outside of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park. It took 180km (111 miles) of poor dirt roads to get here and the nearest paved road is 85km (53 miles) away. Our purpose for coming to Buhoma was to see the mountain gorillas in the wild.
In August 2005 we spent three weeks exploring Peru, visiting the Amazon Basin, hiking in Colca Canyon and gazing on the lost city of Machu Picchu.
This was no ordinary vacation; instead our Cosmos (around the world) journey with our kids was a lifestyle change that lasted over four months, from September 2003 to January 2004.
We took a multi-day trek into Colca Canyon, one of the deepest in the world. We visited several villages and viewed condors from a canyon lookout.
As I write this, we are nearing the end of our journey on the Tazara train from Kapiri Mposhi (K.M.), Zambia to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Our train departed two days ago at 3:10pm. The total journey is 1860km (a little more than 1100 miles).
We flew from Delhi to SIkkim, which is located in the northeastern part of India. It was an independent kingdom until 1974, when it became part of India.
We are now in a small town in the state of Sikkim, India called Yuksom. It is the jumping off point for our six day trek in the Himalayas.
We just completed our six-day trek in Western Sikkim, India. We met our guide, “Paul” at the airport near Darjeeling.
